Chicago Court Leaves Gamon's $17.4 Million Soup Rack Verdict in Place and Adds $12.2 Million in Prejudgment Interest.

The September 17 rulings

On September 17, 2026, Judge Georgia N. Alexakis of the Northern District of Illinois denied the defendants' renewed motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(b) to set aside the jury's damages award in Gamon Plus, Inc. v. The Campbell's Company f/k/a Campbell Soup Company, No. 1:15-cv-08940 (ECF No. 730). In a separate order the same day, the court granted Gamon's motion for prejudgment and post-judgment interest (ECF Nos. 729 and 731). The docket entry states that prejudgment interest is awarded in the amount of $11,963,701 against Campbell's and $278,991.89 against Trinity Manufacturing, and that post-judgment interest is awarded at a rate of 3.56 percent, in an amount to be finalized at the time of payment.

The parties, the patents and the long road to trial

Gamon Plus, Inc. and Gamon International, Inc. filed the case on October 8, 2015. In a January 24, 2024 claim construction opinion, Judge John Robert Blakey described both plaintiffs as designers and producers of specialty packaging and point-of-purchase displays. He wrote that Gamon Plus owns U.S. Patent 8,827,111, issued September 9, 2014, and U.S. Patent 9,144,326, issued September 29, 2015, both titled Multi-chute Gravity Feed Dispenser Display, and that Gamon International is their exclusive licensee. The defendants are The Campbell's Company, formerly Campbell Soup Company; Meijer, Inc. and The Kroger Co., which the opinion said sell Campbell's brands in retail markets; and Trinity Manufacturing, L.L.C., which the opinion described as a Gamon competitor in the product display industry. The accused products are the IQ Maximizer gravity-feed racks used to display soup cans.

The same opinion recounts that Gamon first asserted six patents, that four were invalidated in proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and that Gamon voluntarily canceled some remaining claims of the '111 patent. It states that, as a result of inter partes review, claims 1 through 16 of the '111 patent were canceled and claims 27, 28 and 32 to 35 were found patentable, and that the district court case was stayed by agreement from November 4, 2016, through July 2021.

The verdict and the judgment

The case went to a five-day jury trial in October 2025. The final jury instructions (ECF No. 696) told the jury that the case concerned claims 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 27, 28, 33 and 35 of the '111 patent and claims 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16 and 17 of the '326 patent, and that the defendants infringed all of them: Campbell's, Kroger and Meijer directly, and Trinity by inducing or contributing to their infringement. The defendants contended the claims were invalid as obvious, and the jury rejected those defenses. The instructions set the damages period from September 9, 2014, the issue date of the '111 patent, to June 20, 2023, the date the asserted patents expired.

On October 17, 2025, the jury returned a verdict for Gamon of $17,000,000 against Campbell's, $398,564.27 against Trinity, and $0 against Meijer and Kroger (ECF No. 698), and the court entered judgment in those amounts on October 20, 2025 (ECF No. 700). On November 18, 2025, the court granted Campbell's unopposed and consent motion to stay execution on the final judgment against it pending appeal (ECF No. 718). On December 5, 2025, it granted the parties' joint motion to enter Gamon's bill of costs (ECF No. 722).

Why the court kept the damages award

Campbell's and Trinity renewed their motion for judgment as a matter of law of no remedy on November 17, 2025 (ECF No. 713). They argued that a reasonable jury could have awarded only zero or nominal damages because Gamon offered no evidence of apportionment and no non-speculative proof of a reasonable royalty. The court rejected both arguments. On apportionment, the defendants said the award improperly captured the value of the racks' door design and the Campbell's-designed door cards, which together created a "billboard effect." The court pointed to claim language covering a door that covers the product loading openings of two chutes and has a forwardly disposed face capable of holding a product label or advertising, and, in one claim, a door with a vertical height at least twice the diameter of the products. From that language and testimony by Gamon's technical expert and an inventor witness, the court held, the jury could fairly imagine a billboard effect attributable to the patented features.

The court also found built-in apportionment in comparable licensing evidence. The jury heard that in 2007 Gamon offered to license the patents to Campbell's for a lump sum of $20 to $24 million, which the defendants' own damages expert called the "best starting point" for negotiations, and that Gamon licensed gravity-feed racks for beverages to a third-party company in 2021 in an agreement valued at about $24 million. The court held that this evidence, with testimony on comparability, let the jury calculate an award with built-in apportionment, and that the record also bore on all of the Georgia-Pacific factors.

On the second argument, the court said the defendants' position boiled down to the claim that Gamon could not prove damages without a damages expert, a point it had rejected before trial. It added that there is no requirement that a royalty base be used at all, that the record supported an award built from the 2007 offer and the 2021 license, and, quoting Federal Circuit precedent, that a jury's choice "simply must be within the range encompassed by the record as a whole."

What to watch next

Watch for any notice of appeal to the Federal Circuit from the judgment and the September 17, 2026 rulings, and for the final calculation of post-judgment interest. The case can end at any time, including by settlement or voluntary dismissal.